This is a proposal for a pilot study to evaluate the use, during early stages of idiopathic scoliosis, of an inconspicuous, lightweight, posture-training device for teaching the child to achieve and maintain a better posture. The benign nature of the device lends itself to practical application in the early management of scoliosis. There is reason to believe that earlier treatment may be more effective. Current nonoperative treatment, spinal braces, may cause social and emotional problems, while neglect of the condition may cause physical as well as social and emotional problems. Whenever the child has been in a poor posture for 10 seconds, the posture-training device sounds an inconspicuous tone which becomes somewhat louder and more perspicuous after an additional 20 seconds. As soon as the child achieves correct posture, all tone is turned off. The device also measures the total time in the improved posture. This new behavioral approach can be evaluated most efficiently on a step-by-step basis. The first two models of the posture-training device are working effectively. The present proposal is to secure further data on the mechanical reliability, practicability, and therapeutic promise of the posture-training device by trials on 20 additional children in the early stages of idiopathic scoliosis. The primary measure of the effects of the treatment will be the measurement of the curve on an upright X-ray by the Cobb method. Subsidiary goals are to develop and standardize procedures that would be useful in a larger study, to develop and test the reliability and validity of lightphotographic measures of spinal curvature, and to compare the responses of normal and of scoliotic children to the command to stand as straight and tall as possible and to an initial period of highly specific training by the posture-training device.